Mod:Apotheosis/Pollen With Trigger

Pollen with Trigger
A small floating projectile that casts another spell upon collision.
Type	Projectile
Mana Drain	20
Cast Delay	+0.03
Damage (Projectile)	5
Damage (Explosion)	5
Explosion Radius	7
Lifetime ⓘ	750
Spread	0.6
Speed	200
Spread Modifier	+20
Bounces	1
Additional Information
ID	apotheosis_pollen_trigger

Pollen with Trigger is a projectile spell that will shoot a projectile with a fast initial speed that rapidly slows to a stop after traveling a short distance. It will then proceed to slowly float toward any enemies in homing range, creating a small explosion and triggering a payload on contact.

Enemy projectiles and self-harming projectiles (such as Pinpoint of Light or Piercing Shot modifier) can collide with floating Pollen, allowing large clouds of Pollen to double as a shield against enemy fire. Floating Pollen will harm you on contact.

It is possible to use Pollen to dig due to their small explosion upon contact with creatures or material. Paired with rapid fire wands makes them a cheap tool to infinitely dig through soft materials up to the hardness of rock. However, this method is somewhat unreliable, because Pollen tend to bounce off of sloped surfaces or home in on enemies through walls. So it is best to dig with them at a small distance.

There appears to be a bug where this spell's projectiles will spawn without a damaging hitbox, resulting in situations where the projectiles will appear stuck harmlessly on an enemy until they expire.

Modifiers which cause spells to harm you, such as Bloodlust and Piercing Shot, have a detrimental effect which causes Pollen projectiles to collide with other Pollen projectiles and cancel each other out.

Tips

• Modifiers which cause spells to harm you, such as Bloodlust and Piercing Shot, have a detrimental effect which causes Pollen projectiles to collide with other Pollen projectiles and cancel each other out.
• The spell's movement speed while homing is very slow, and will often fail to catch retreating enemies until they are well offscreen. This can be remedied with speed up and homing modifiers.
• The unreliable hitbox on the spell means modifiers which attach additional damaging effects to a projectile, such as Damage Field and Fireball Orbit, can provide a greater benefit than modifiers which directly increase projectile damage. Damage Field in particular can deal a lot of damage if Pollen projectiles get stuck on an enemy.
• Projectile Repulsion Field will render Pollen almost entirely harmless to you.
• Magic Guard and Big Magic Guard can circle around Pollen projectiles. Multicasting Pollen followed by Magic Guard will reliably produce this effect, while swapping the order will attach the Magic Guard to pre-existing entities.

See Also

Pollen has some complex effects, so it may be worth looking at the base spell.